Elegant, easy-to-use
desktop
Rock-solid system
In a couple of minutes or less, the Installer will easily install the operating system into your PC’s hard drive. Resilient Linux requires at least 4GB of RAM memory.
You can optionally set a password for encrypting the persistence partition (encryption process may not support old hardware).
You can test/use Resilient Linux in a virtualized environment as well, the same way you are used to do with any other operating system. VirtualBox is supported and tested. Give some video memory and enable the 3D acceleration on the hypervisor.
Usage
System user will be created upon the first boot with the GNOME Initial Setup Tool (name, region, i18n can be setup here).
Use sudo for super-cow powers.
Due to the system’s unique partitioning scheme, some programs may not work, for example Dropbox doesn’t, but the good news is that Dropbox Maestral does.
Backup & restore
You can backup your system with ease and then restore to the same or another PC, with the same Resilient Linux version installed.
For backing up your persistent data (which are, after all, the diffs from the stock installation), just tar the rw folder within the fourth (persistence) partition and take note of the running kernel version (the contained kernel modules must match the running kernel).
Restore is a two phase process:
1. Make the system’s kernel match the kernel version you used for your backed system.
2. Untar the rw.tar file as the rw folder in the persistence partition and reboot.
Procedure will be automated in the future reseases of Reslient Linux.
Trick. The persistence partition is already unlocked and mounted on the running system in /run/live/persistence/sdX4.
CASE STUDY
System snapshots
Taking a snapshot of the entire operating system (for example before a risky update) is as easy as the image shows!
Download the desktop image
Reset to defaults
Resilient Linux can be reset to defaults by booting it with the Reset to defaults option on the bootloader.
In order to avoid accidental disasters, you need to edit the boot option’s command line and add the “sk-factory-reset-confirm” parameter for confirmation.
System will be kept back to the stock installation, every data will be erased and the initial kernel will be applied. The persistence partition encryption key isn’t modified.
Reset to defaults feature available from Resilient Linux 2.2.
Open source
Resilient Linux and Resilient Linux Installer are free and open-source software, whose development is hosted on GitHub. Feel free to contribute to the projects.
Technically, Resilient Linux is a persistent (optionally encrypted) next-generation live operating system: an operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux which features a liveng partitioning scheme, originally thought for live operating systems. Resilient Linux, however, is hard drive installable: the liveng compliancy (programs and kernel updates with a readonly system partition) is thus suitable for “indestructible” hard drive installations.
Resilient Linux differs from the LumIT Labs’ liveng definition in the way the readonly second system partition is rewritten: a hook is called at every initramfs update and not only within a kernel package’s postinst. This allows using the standard Debian kernel packages and it’s more robust. Behaviour is accomplished by forking the live-tool package – see the /bin/live-update-initramfs file inside.
